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25040Venturebeat.comAmazon’s Prime Photos service now lets you share storage with 5 family membershttp://venturebeat.com/2016/10/18/amazons-prime-photos-service-now-lets-you-share-storage-with-5-family-members/
http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/18/amazons-prime-photos-service-now-lets-you-share-storage-with-5-family-members/#respondTue, 18 Oct 2016 07:00:51 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=2083402Amazon Prime Photos has been given a refresh, thanks to new features designed to improve discovery, engagement, and sharing. Starting today, U.S. Prime members can use what’s called a “Family Vault,” which grants unlimited photo storage to five family members at no additional cost. In addition, the service now supports smarter search technology and photo […]
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Amazon Prime Photos has been given a refresh, thanks to new features designed to improve discovery, engagement, and sharing. Starting today, U.S. Prime members can use what’s called a “Family Vault,” which grants unlimited photo storage to five family members at no additional cost. In addition, the service now supports smarter search technology and photo printing with free delivery.

“Prime members love the benefit of unlimited photo storage but often struggle to collect and organize photos across multiple devices and accounts into a single, shareable archive,” explained Amazon’s director of Prime Photos, David Nenke. “We launched the Family Vault to make it easy for family members to safely store and share all their favorite moments.”

Amazon said Prime Photos has tens of millions of users, and the update will be available only in the U.S. The Family Vault initiative is a way for the company to highlight how scalable its infrastructure is and to further differentiate itself from Dropbox, Flickr, Facebook, Google Photos, and Microsoft OneDrive.

“Primarily, Prime members have used the Prime Photos service to store their photos and video. With Family Vault, we expect that Prime members and their friends/family included in the Vault will be able to share photos with each other and also link out photos with social media, etc,” a company spokesperson told VentureBeat.

Users of Prime Photos will have unlimited storage for photos, but just 5GB of video. You don’t have to be a Prime user to access this feature through a friend or family member, and you will retain these features as long as one person has a Prime account. If the Prime member cancels or fails to renew their membership, everyone will still have access to view and download their photos for up to 90 days, but Family Vault members are prohibited from uploading new content.

Other updates include an improved search engine that will now find photos and videos using technology that’s reminiscent of image recognition and pertinent tags. Instead of scouring through thousands of photos to find specific images, you can now query “sunset” or “wedding” in order to surface the image from that trip you took two years ago. Users can browse the photos of individual family members and friends in the people view, along with searching by location and date.

Lastly, Amazon is giving Prime members the option to print out photos stored within its cloud service. Uncovered in September,Amazon Prints lets you print photos — starting at $0.09 each, with books starting at $20. The program is designed to compete against Shutterfly, Blurb, Costco, and many similar services.

All of these features are accessible to those with Amazon Prime membership and comes after the online retailer stealthily shuttered its unlimited photos storage plan in favor of making a product exclusively for Prime members.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/18/amazons-prime-photos-service-now-lets-you-share-storage-with-5-family-members/feed/02083402Amazon’s Prime Photos service now lets you share storage with 5 family membersEveralbum launches Explore to automatically organize all your photos in one placehttp://venturebeat.com/2016/05/03/everalbum-launches-explore-to-automatically-organize-all-your-photos-in-one-place/
http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/03/everalbum-launches-explore-to-automatically-organize-all-your-photos-in-one-place/#respondTue, 03 May 2016 16:00:29 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1940139Today Everalbum has launched a feature that uses machine learning to surface photos around the important moments of your life. Everalbum Explore, available on both the company’s iOS and Android apps, aggregates results from beyond your camera roll, including cloud-based services like Dropbox, Google Photos, Instagram, Facebook, iMessage, Flickr, and Amazon. Created by former TokBox employees Andrew Dudum and […]
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Today Everalbum has launched a feature that uses machine learning to surface photos around the important moments of your life. Everalbum Explore, available on both the company’s iOS and Android apps, aggregates results from beyond your camera roll, including cloud-based services like Dropbox, Google Photos, Instagram, Facebook, iMessage, Flickr, and Amazon.

Created by former TokBox employees Andrew Dudum and Don Holly, on the surface Everalbum may seem to be just another service that backs up your camera roll, such as Flickr, Dropbox, and Google Photos. But it does quite a bit more, including funneling those images into albums based on events, sharing albums and photos with friends and family, and consolidating into a single place photos that were scattered across the Internet. And with nearly 1 billion photos backed up, Everalbum has gathered quite a bit of information.

That’s where Everalbum Explore hopes to be useful — it wants to help you parse your backed-up photos to find the most relevant ones without you having to manually tag or search. To start, this feature looks at five categories: holidays, friends, landmarks, places, and fun. The company said that these were the “most photographed categories that are also the most emotionally resonant, based on the photos our users have stored and organized with us.”

In testing out the feature, I found that Everalbum’s machine learning and image recognition technology was pretty accurate for the most part. It was able to isolate specific images from across 20,000 photos I’ve backed up to tell me which ones were taken around AT&T Park, the Computer History Museum, Levi’s Stadium, Oracle Arena, and the Space Needle in Seattle. It also sorted them by holiday, showing me those taken around St. Patrick’s Day, Labor Day, and Halloween. Lastly, it parsed through to show me those that are sketches, photos of whiteboards, documents, and screenshots.

These categories are set by Everalbum, and there’s no plan right now to allow users to create their own. “We know that most mainstream users are not interested in searching, tinkering with thousands of photos they’ve stowed away in so many different services,” said company cofounder Andrew Dudum. “There isn’t even a fair understanding of what the ‘cloud’ storage services means to the mainstream users. Our research clearly indicated that users just want to be delighted with their precious moments that they get to sit back, rediscover, and experience, especially at the right time.”

Everalbum isn’t the first one to automatically sort your photos for you, as Google Photos also has this capability, and other services will likely add the capability to do so. However, Everalbum’s ability to pull from 10 sources gives it greater reach, thereby permitting you to have a real digital album of your life.

“Our data shows that these five categories are the most common, highly photographed moments that people around the world take photos around,” Dudum remarked. “Over time, we’ll be using more signals to help us surface far more interesting collections of photos that’s unique to every user and surfaced back to them at the right time.”

The company considers Everalbum Explore a platform and says that it will “continue to get smarter, more dynamic, and more relevant in helping you appreciate your fondest memories every single day.” More categories are in the works, but Everalbum declined to share specific timing.

You can test out this feature on Everalbum’s iOS and Android app today.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/03/everalbum-launches-explore-to-automatically-organize-all-your-photos-in-one-place/feed/01940139Everalbum launches Explore to automatically organize all your photos in one placeDrew Houston dismisses criticism of Dropbox, says it has ‘a long way to go’http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/21/drew-houston-dismisses-criticism-of-dropbox-says-it-has-a-long-way-to-go/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/21/drew-houston-dismisses-criticism-of-dropbox-says-it-has-a-long-way-to-go/#respondMon, 21 Sep 2015 18:28:27 +0000https://venturebeat.com/?p=1807054SAN FRANCISCO — Drew Houston wants everyone to know that Dropbox isn’t worried about all the chatter that says it’s overvalued and is missing the boat. Rather, Dropbox’s chief executive says that the company is focused on its current mission of building a way for people to collaborate while also connecting with other people, companies, […]
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SAN FRANCISCO — Drew Houston wants everyone to know that Dropbox isn’t worried about all the chatter that says it’s overvalued and is missing the boat. Rather, Dropbox’s chief executive says that the company is focused on its current mission of building a way for people to collaborate while also connecting with other people, companies, and ecosystems around the world.

Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Houston sought to assure the community that Dropbox is a viable business, contrary to recent reports that it’s overhyped. “This is a problem that everyone in the world has,” he said. “You have to have a huge market, team, and product that everyone loves.”

Originally started as a service that let users have a cloud-based home for all their stuff stored on different devices, Dropbox has gradually evolved to now tackle the issue of how to help people organize everything stored in multiple places on the cloud. It’s attempted to launch standalone applications to tackle this issue, including Carousel, which hasn’t fared that well.

Houston acknowledged the sluggish adoption of Carousel, saying that it still has a long way to go, but he remained adamant that all the problems that Dropbox is trying to solve are big problems. “We go after them because they’re big and important. If they’re easy to solve, someone would have done it already.”

Now Dropbox is going after the enterprise space, a market where Box has already established a beachhead. He shrugged off concerns. “It’s a huge market,” Houston reiterated. “We’re focused on how we can get 10 times bigger.”

When asked if Dropbox discussed internally the possibilities of an economic downturn and its impact on the company, Houston said that the company doesn’t talk about “the broader market environment.” Regardless of a good or bad economy, people will still have needs.

He acknowledged that his team is far from finished: “We have a long way to go.”

Pundits and investors have their eyes on Dropbox to see when the company will go public. It’s one of the few companies with a valuation over a billion dollars — in fact, it’s estimated to be over $10 billion. But Houston said that the company won’t be filing for its IPO anytime soon: “We’re really enjoying having the flexibility and now having to enjoy that universe. We’ve been heads down for the last several months recruiting and thinking about the next generation of products.”

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/21/drew-houston-dismisses-criticism-of-dropbox-says-it-has-a-long-way-to-go/feed/01807054Drew Houston dismisses criticism of Dropbox, says it has ‘a long way to go’Amazon releases Cloud Drive SDKs for Android and iOShttp://venturebeat.com/2015/06/17/amazon-releases-cloud-drive-sdks-for-android-and-ios/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/17/amazon-releases-cloud-drive-sdks-for-android-and-ios/#respondWed, 17 Jun 2015 19:01:15 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1753155Simplifying the process of incorporating Amazon Cloud Drive into non-Amazon apps could result in broader adoption of the service.
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Mobile app developers can now more easily integrate Amazon Cloud Drive — Amazon’s cloud storage service for photos, videos, and other files — into their apps. Today Amazon announced new Android and iOS software development kits (SDKs) for the service.

“The updates will allow you to provide Unlimited Storage benefits for your customers using your apps more quickly and efficiently,” Amazon principal evangelist David Isbitski wrote in a blog post on the news.

The new SDKs are part of the broader Amazon Mobile App SDK, Isbitski wrote.

Cloud Drive isn’t as popular as, say, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, but simplifying the process of incorporating it into non-Amazon apps could result in broader adoption of the service.

Not that such apps don’t already exist. Isbitski called out Android apps like A+ Gallery, TextMaker HD Basic, PlanMaker HD Basic, and Presentations HD Basic, as well as the iOS app PhotoTime. Other iOS apps with Amazon Cloud Drive support are on the way, Isbitski wrote.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/17/amazon-releases-cloud-drive-sdks-for-android-and-ios/feed/01753155Amazon releases Cloud Drive SDKs for Android and iOSBox now has 32M users and 44K paying companies, both up over 25% since Marchhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/12/10/box-users/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/10/box-users/#respondWed, 10 Dec 2014 22:56:22 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1622808The numbers came out in an updated S-1 filing.
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Cloud file-sharing company Box today released new numbers about its usage in an updated S-1 filing ahead of its delayed initial public offering.

The number of paying organizations is up, too. Box now has more than 44,000 of those, up from more than 34,000 in March.

As of October 31, Box had 1,131 employees — up from 972 on January 31 of this year.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/10/box-users/feed/01622808Box now has 32M users and 44K paying companies, both up over 25% since MarchThe cheat sheet to choosing a cloud backup servicehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/12/03/the-cheat-sheet-to-choosing-a-cloud-backup-service/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/03/the-cheat-sheet-to-choosing-a-cloud-backup-service/#respondThu, 04 Dec 2014 01:11:12 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1615985SPONSORED: To help make sense of all the available cloud storage options, we’ve compiled a cheat-sheet of features to look for when choosing an online backup service.
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If the idea of losing a few terabytes of your data can bring on an apoplectic convulsion, cloud storage has probably crossed your mind. Third-party cloud backup has become a lot more popular because the convenience is so attractive and it avoids the capital investment in infrastructure and hardware for server-based backup.

Of course, concerns around data loss also apply to personal info. A lifetime of photos and family videos isn’t something to be trifled with — and the consumer world is rife with stories of horror-struck individuals unable to retrieve precious personal data.

To help make sense of all the available cloud storage options, we’ve compiled a cheat-sheet of features to look for when choosing an online backup service.

Devices

Whether you’re approaching cloud backup on an individual or business level, it’s important to have backup that will cover multiple devices. It’s standard now for people to have as many as five devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets (with varying storage capacities) and smartphones (sometimes more than one, for personal and work use).

In a business context, a large network of devices is a significant security concern. One thousand employees — each having multiple devices which can be used for work — may be storing critical data that requires backup. While a server environment tends to manage a company’s on-site technology, employee-owned devices also need to be considered.

On the personal level, the average family can easily own over 10 devices altogether. And while photos or videos transferred to your laptop may get backed up, what about those spontaneous moments captured on smartphones or tablets?

When choosing backup, it’s important to understand what your needs are, and find the service that meets them. For instance, how many devices do you need to backup for yourself, your family or your business? What service will backup all those devices for the best value? Some cloud backup providers like IDrive provide backup for an unlimited number of devices, even for businesses, so be sure to explore backup services that offer exactly what you need.

Security

Security is the biggest concern on people’s minds when considering cloud storage. Major security breaches of the last few years have put everyone on high alert, which itself is not a bad thing. People are taking more care to have stronger passwords, and different ones for different accounts (no, you do not want to use the same password for online banking as your email). But for cloud-based backup, it’s critical that your data is protected by the highest level encryption. 256-bit AES encryption is today’s gold standard. AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and it’s the same encryption used by the U.S. government to protect classified information. However, make sure the cloud backup you’re considering is 256-bit AES — not 128-bit AES — which is older, less secure technology.

Privacy

Recent corporate hacks have sounded a huge alarm bell calling for better data security. But it was the recent celebrity selfie hacks which struck a chord with the public on a human level. Whether it’s your family photos, or the kind of intensely personal data that celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence are fighting to keep out of the spotlight, you want your personal STUFF to stay private.

This is where you may want to consider private key encryption, another layer of protection that makes your data virtually impossible to crack. Private key is only offered by certain backup providers. In fact, some of the bigger cloud players don’t provide it. With a private key, even the cloud service holding your data cannot access your files. That means only you can unlock your data. Private key encryption can protect data from all devices, a measure which Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Kirsten Dunst may have already put into place.

Comprehensive backup and sync

For both SMB and enterprise organizations, you’ll want to be assured you can backup servers, databases, SQL, Exchange, Linux devices, etc. Regarding Linux backups, you may want to handle your own code, but you can also explore a simplified backup process available through some third-party providers such as IDrive.

With enterprise-level backup, you want assurances from your provider that you’re not going to be held back by the amount of data you have. If you have 100 terabytes of data, you don’t want to learn along the way that you’ve come up against a threshold limit. This kind of comprehensive approach is essential for growing businesses. It’s also important to have a cloud-based backup service that will manage both the backup and sync side of the equation. That way you can consolidate functionality, and work more efficiently and nimbly as a business or individual.

Ultimately, choosing cloud backup is a matter of knowing your needs and the best practices for meeting them. Armed with this cheat-sheet, you’ll be in a great position to make the move to the cloud.

Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/03/the-cheat-sheet-to-choosing-a-cloud-backup-service/feed/01615985The cheat sheet to choosing a cloud backup serviceRedbooth takes $11M to sell task tracking, file storage, & video chat software to your companyhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/11/17/redbooth-funding/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/17/redbooth-funding/#respondTue, 18 Nov 2014 01:45:56 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1608368Redbooth, a startup with software that employees can use to manage and communicate about projects, has raised an $11 million funding round. Word of the new round came in the form of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. The startup integrates with cloud-storage tools from Google, Box, and Dropbox, and it offers an […]
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Redbooth, a startup with software that employees can use to manage and communicate about projects, has raised an $11 million funding round. Word of the new round came in the form of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing today.

The startup integrates with cloud-storage tools from Google, Box, and Dropbox, and it offers an application programming interface (API) developers can use to tie Redbooth into other software. But part of the appeal of Redbooth is its wide portfolio, which features file storage, chat, high-definition video conferencing, and project management tools — for a price that won’t make a company bankrupt.

“Our ability to tie chat into the workflow of getting things done makes us different from any other vendor out there,” Dan Schoenbaum, Redbooth’s chief executive, told VentureBeat in an interview.

Now, Schoenbaum said, Redbooth can keep integrating with software big companies already work with — like CA’s Clarity software for project management and Salesforce.com’s software for tracking sales leads. Plus, Redbooth can spend more on sales and marketing in order to pick up more customers, of which there are already more than 5,500.

Ninety percent of customers pay for cloud-based Redbooth software, starting at $49 a month. The price doubles if companies want to run the software in their own data centers.

Fundamentally, even though Redbooth can step in and provide several tools to share ideas about projects, Schoenbaum knows it’s unreasonable to expect every company to drop all the services they happily pay for.

Instead, he said, Redbooth employs an “embrace and extend philosophy.”

Above: Redbooth can manage tasks.

Image Credit: Screen shot

Altpoint Ventures led the round. Avalon Ventures also participated.

Data Collective participated in last year’s $5 million round in the startup, which back then was named Teambox. To date, the startup has raised $17.5 million.

Redbooth started in Barcelona in 2008 and is based in Redwood City, Calif.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/17/redbooth-funding/feed/01608368Redbooth takes $11M to sell task tracking, file storage, & video chat software to your companyMicrosoft finally killed cloud storage. What’s next?http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/28/microsoft-finally-killed-cloud-storage-whats-next/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/28/microsoft-finally-killed-cloud-storage-whats-next/#respondWed, 29 Oct 2014 02:40:05 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1590694GUEST: It's exciting that we can finally lay the cloud-storage market to rest and embark on more evolved, full-bodied solutions in the cloud that can bring real value to businesses. As the saying goes, “As one life ends, another one begins.”
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GUEST:

Just over six months ago, I made an early prediction that cloud storage would reach $0 over the next 12-18 months. Well, it hasn’t become “free” just yet, but it is now unlimited thanks to Microsoft. This week, Microsoft set a precedent by making storage unlimited to all users — business and consumer — for their respective subscription fees. It will only be a matter of time here before Google and Amazon follow suit, marking the “death” of the cloud-storage market. While that may cause deep concern for some and send others into storage bliss, I am unfazed by the news and can humbly say, “I told you so.”

Let’s face it — there is no way for the small cloud service providers that built their businesses around storage to compete. With the vast numbers of apps and features these bigger companies can offer, it is seemingly impossible for the smaller companies to stay afloat. This will spell acquisition for some, bankruptcy for others, and doomsday for everyone else involved that isn’t named Google or Amazon, right?

Not so fast…

At one time, companies like Box, Dropbox, and Egnyte were all grouped into this publicly defined “cloud storage” market, but we have since evolved into much more robust platforms, playing inside a broader ecosystem than originally thought. So while small companies (and when I say small, I mean sub-multi-billion dollar revenue companies) will face extinction or succumb to pricing pressures, this just signals the start of the next chapter.

This breakaway from a commoditized cloud storage market is just in the beginning stages, and there is undoubtedly a massive stream of innovation on the horizon. While there may not be one aligned definition for this new market yet, a cloud-computing industry set to be worth $75 billion by the end of this year is leaving the door wide open for new and old players alike to find a successful formula.

What’s next?

Everyone will continue to try and play Nostradamus, but those who are strong enough to survive the cloud-storage era know that there is never just one golden ticket. Cloud service providers will now need to create a secure and unique ecosystem where files can actually live, not just be stored. While everyone’s approach to this new era will be different, there will be three must-haves:

Security

It goes without saying that security has become paramount for any file-services solution out there. End-to-end encryption and two-factor authentication are two security protocols that will become much more common in this next generation of the cloud. Thanks to Edward Snowden and shady practices from the National Security Agency, these are no longer nice-to-haves but must-haves, as far as businesses are concerned. Otherwise, they may have to accrue an expensive balance-sheet item for liability insurance. Just ask folks at Target and JPMorgan Chase.

Mobility

Everything will have to work on mobile. Period. With more than 6.5 billion people currently subscribed to a mobile network worldwide, there is no reason for an organization to struggle with mobility. If files cannot be accessed wherever an employee might be, then they are of no use to the employee and will actually hurt an organization’s productivity, rather than help to improve it. Whether it is via tablet, smartphone, or even smart watch, employees having access to their work at all times is an invaluable asset for the future of business.

Collaboration

We are now in an era of business where processes are expedited and workflow has accelerated, so much so that projects which have historically finished in months are now being completed in weeks or even days. This would be impossible without the use of real-time, meaningful collaboration. Files will now not only need to be secure and available anywhere. They need the ability to be reviewed and revised efficiently across teams, both internal and external.

The first stop for the cloud’s evolution was storage, but we cannot stop there. As organizations continue to evolve and find new ways to do business, we need to find new ways to leverage the cloud for optimal business performance. We are now moving on to more complex use cases that require us to move into another pivotal time — the second stop on the road of the cloud’s evolution.

The jury is still out on whether users want to be vertically integrated and use just one underlying brand for all of their business needs, or if they want to have the option of building their own portfolio of apps to get the job done on their own terms. Regardless, it is very exciting that we can finally lay the cloud-storage market to rest and embark on more evolved, full-bodied solutions in the cloud that can bring real value to businesses. As the saying goes, “As one life ends, another one begins.”

Fortunately for us, a new life is just beginning!

Vineet Jain is chief executive of enterprise file-sharing company Egnyte.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/28/microsoft-finally-killed-cloud-storage-whats-next/feed/01590694Microsoft finally killed cloud storage. What’s next?Look out, iCloud. Microsoft buffs up OneDrive with more free storagehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/09/20/look-out-icloud-microsoft-buffs-up-onedrive-with-more-free-storage/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/20/look-out-icloud-microsoft-buffs-up-onedrive-with-more-free-storage/#respondSun, 21 Sep 2014 02:00:39 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1557697Amid all the fresh interest in Apple’s iCloud cloud-storage option following the company’s rollout of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Microsoft doesn’t want you to forget about its cloud-storage service, OneDrive. Late yesterday the company announced a promotion that bumps up OneDrive’s free storage tier — and not only for iPhone users, but […]
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Amid all the fresh interest in Apple’s iCloud cloud-storage option following the company’s rollout of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Microsoft doesn’t want you to forget about its cloud-storage service, OneDrive. Late yesterday the company announced a promotion that bumps up OneDrive’s free storage tier — and not only for iPhone users, but for Android and Windows Phone owners as well.

Douglas Pearce, group program manager for OneDrive, walked people through the offer and its implications in a blog post:

All you have to do is sign up for OneDrive and activate the auto upload feature for your camera roll sometime between now and the end of September, and you will get 30 GB of free OneDrive storage moving forward (15 GB base and 15 GB camera roll bonus). For those getting ready to install iOS8, this means you won’t have to delete a bunch of photos or apps to make room for the upgrade. For those buying a new phone, it means you can take all the high resolution photos and videos you want without worrying about the amount of storage you have.

The storage increase also applies out to iPhone owners who already send their pictures to OneDrive, Pearce wrote.

Microsoft can make such moves quickly and defend itself in the cloud-storage business because it operates data centers and buys storage at scale. Companies like Google and Amazon can do so as well, and now that its Zocalo file-sharing service is available, it’s reasonable to expect price cuts, storage boosts, and other teasers from Amazon in the future. Box and Dropbox, which are still privately owned, have been making driving up storage capacity as well, but they’re just not as large as Microsoft.

In the light of Apple’s iCloud price cut this month, it’s worth keeping an eye on Apple to see if it becomes even more aggressive in challenging Microsoft and others in the cloud-storage business in the future.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/20/look-out-icloud-microsoft-buffs-up-onedrive-with-more-free-storage/feed/01557697Look out, iCloud. Microsoft buffs up OneDrive with more free storageNext generation apps need better file systems to scalehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/09/18/next-generation-apps-need-better-file-systems-to-scale/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/18/next-generation-apps-need-better-file-systems-to-scale/#respondThu, 18 Sep 2014 15:00:03 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1553757SPONSORED: Should developers invest time, energy and resources in creating their own DIY file system that sits on top of the public cloud infrastructure? Or take the shortcut and use a cloud storage API, and surrender their users’ data to popular cloud storage services?
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SPONSORED:

This sponsored post is produced by Bitcasa.

Creating an app involves a lot of moving parts. Early in the design process, decisions have to be made around how app data will be stored, and for most developers the cloud is an obvious choice. Then comes the next important decision: invest time, energy and resources in creating your own DIY file system that sits on top of the public cloud infrastructure; or take the shortcut and use a cloud storage API, and surrender their users’ data to popular cloud storage services.

More and more are choosing the latter, but the results could include:

A disjointed experience between the primary and cloud applications

Losing customer data to another company which restricts your ability to analyze customers usage holistically

Brand dilution due to the fragmented user experience

The good news is that a third option is emerging that will give developers the simplicity of plugging into an API, while offering developers ownership of data, flexibility, scalability and, most importantly, performance. In this emerging space, companies like Bitcasa (a plug-and-play file system platform), are allowing developers to create a layer of logic that sits on top of public cloud infrastructure — effectively a cloud file system offered as a service. This means you don’t need to invest time and money in doing it yourself, and you no longer need to surrender your users’ data and compromise app performance by using quick-fix API alternatives.

Going forward, it’s pretty much guaranteed that the next generation of apps will require better file systems that offer broad capabilities, performance, security and scalability, and most importantly, developer control of user data and experience. By leveraging specialist cloud file systems, developers will gain access to proven technology that’s already been tested across millions of users. It’s a comforting thought if you’re looking for rapid growth and user adoption.

These highly accessible and secure file systems will also give app developers the ability to offer sought-after functionality instantly — features such as file sync, sharing, media transcoding and streaming, as well as organization of meta data.

Building apps on a scalable and secure platform will give developers complete control of user data and user experience. The result? Developers can be free to focus once again on what they do best — delivering high quality app experience.

Bitcasa is currently opening access to all developers who want to take advantage of its CloudFS APIs. Sign up for a free account here.

Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/18/next-generation-apps-need-better-file-systems-to-scale/feed/01553757Next generation apps need better file systems to scaleApple drops iCloud pricing to $0.99/mo. for 20 GB, $4 for 200GBhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/09/09/apple-drops-icloud-pricing-to-0-99mo-for-20-gb-4-for-200gb/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/09/apple-drops-icloud-pricing-to-0-99mo-for-20-gb-4-for-200gb/#respondTue, 09 Sep 2014 21:50:54 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1548416Apple today announced a new set of prices for iCloud, which should entice most Apple customers to start using the cloud storage service.
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Apple today announced a new set of prices for iCloud, which should entice most Apple customers to start using the cloud storage service.

Previously Apple gave all its customers 5 GB of free storage on iCloud, while offering paid tiers for an additional 10 GB ($20 per year), 20 GB ($40 per year), or 50 GB ($100 per year). The new pricing gives customers the option of getting 20 GB for the low price of just $0.99 per month (about $12 annually). The next tier is an even better deal, giving you 100GB of storage for $4 per month. The highest tier costs $20 a month for 1TB of storage.

The new iCloud prices aren’t the lowest by any means. Both Dropbox and Google Drive offer 1TB of storage for $10 per month and have more pricing options to fit most people’s online storage needs.

However, the advantage of using iCloud for those with an iOS device is pretty significant. Apple allows you to easily backup all the data on your iPhone or iPad from the cloud, which is useful in the event that you lose or break your device. That means everything you do from your phone is saved without having to manage files.

Likely, Apple lowered the price of iCloud storage to drive people toward its new iCloud Drive service ahead of the launch. The service will compete head to head with Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive. But will Apple successfully become a cloud-storage player? It’s up in the air.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/09/apple-drops-icloud-pricing-to-0-99mo-for-20-gb-4-for-200gb/feed/01548416Apple drops iCloud pricing to $0.99/mo. for 20 GB, $4 for 200GBApple is now storing Chinese iCloud user data in Chinahttp://venturebeat.com/2014/08/15/apple-is-now-storing-chinese-icloud-user-data-in-china/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/15/apple-is-now-storing-chinese-icloud-user-data-in-china/#respondFri, 15 Aug 2014 14:11:10 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1528556Apple is now starting to store Chinese user data on China Telecom servers, according to a post on the Fuzhou city government's website.
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Apple is now starting to store Chinese user data on China Telecom servers, according to a post on the Fuzhou city government’s website.

The iPhone maker says keeping Chinese iCloud data on Chinese soil will help give users faster access to their information. iCloud stores backups of information on all Apple devices, iTunes, as well as the company’s photo and office software.

“We have added China Telecom to our list of data center providers to increase bandwidth and improve performance for our customers in mainland China,” the company said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.

China has been coming down hard on American companies operating in China recently over security and antitrust concerns. Microsoft is one such company. The software giant is currently being probed for possible anti-competitive behavior. Anti-virus software firm Symantec was also recently pulled from one of China’s government procurement lists.

Apple is no stranger to China’s vigorous oversight. Just last month, the country cited Apple’s mobile iOS as a security threat for its “Frequent Locations” function, which keeps track of places a user visits often.

Considering that Apple’s continued success in the Chinese market is helping to keep quarterly revenues rising, the company has every reason to keep the Chinese government happy. Storing user data with China Telecom could be beneficial for the state, which is known for keeping an eye on its citizens.

But Apple insists that the state won’t have access to user data. All stored data is encrypted, and Apple will keep encryption keys in the U.S.

However, it seems unlikely that Apple would refuse if the Chinese government were to legally request a user’s files.

While Dropbox‘s consumer offering is popular, its Dropbox for Business service, launched April 2013, hasn’t gained as much traction as the company would like. But thanks to new features announced today, Dropbox hopes to change that.

With an estimated 4 million businesses using Dropbox to store and share documents, it comes as a bit of a surprise that just 80,000 have signed up for Dropbox for Business. Dropbox hopes that new sharing options and search features will make the premium service tier more appealing.

One of the biggest draws of the new Business is full-text search. It will allow people to search at a deeper level into Dropbox folders and files than ever before. Currently, you can only search by file name.

Beefed up security, specifically as it relates to document sharing, ought to have a lot of appeal, too. View-only permissions on shared folders mean only those with the appropriate permissions are allowed to edit specific shared files. Password protection and links with expiration dates round out the security features. Just last month, VentureBeat talked about why both Dropbox and Box needed to change course and ramp up security in order to capture the coveted enterprise market. So this looks like a step in the right direction.

Other features include extending Project Harmony, which allows people to edit Microsoft Office documents in Dropbox, to Android. API tweaks are also included. The latest changes will let third-party apps integrate documents from Dropbox in a more intuitive way, either through Shared Folders or Document Previews.

The sudden feature boost might have something to do with rumors floating about that Dropbox is an IPO candidate. And though the company is currently valued at $10 billion, the more revenue it can generate via paid subscriptions — Dropbox for Business costs $15 per user/month with a minimum of 5 users — the better.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/23/dropbox-for-business-gets-new-sharing-search-features/feed/01512278Dropbox for Business gets new sharing, search featuresMxHero's useful new tool lets you manage email attachments on Box & Google Drivehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/07/18/mxheros-useful-new-tool-lets-you-manage-email-attachments-on-box-google-drive/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/18/mxheros-useful-new-tool-lets-you-manage-email-attachments-on-box-google-drive/#respondFri, 18 Jul 2014 16:45:09 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1509471EXCLUSIVE: Let’s face it, your inbox is no place for files. In yet another move meant to bring sanity to your inbox, MxHero is targeting something we all love to hate: email attachments. The company, which provides a variety of tools meant to upgrade your email experience, is today launching Mail2Cloud, a suite of apps that […]
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EXCLUSIVE:

Let’s face it, your inbox is no place for files.

In yet another move meant to bring sanity to your inbox, MxHero is targeting something we all love to hate: email attachments.

The company, which provides a variety of tools meant to upgrade your email experience, is today launching Mail2Cloud, a suite of apps that will allow you manage your attachments via cloud storage solutions like Box and Google Drive.

By breaking your attachments out of your inbox — a place that was never really suited to extensive file management in the first place — Mail2Cloud opens up new possibilities like instant backup, better file search, and far more control over the files that you send to people. Its “Fusion” app, for example, automatically uploads all of the attachments coming through your inbox to cloud storage and lets you track who’s opening the attachment in real time. Links to the files are automatically included at the bottom of your messages (most people likely won’t even be able to tell you’re using a separate app to manage your attachments).

Mail2Cloud may seem a bit redundant at first glance: After all, online email offerings like Hotmail and Gmail were among the first “cloud” services. And I know many people who end up using their inbox as pseudo-cloud storage. But while email services have gotten better at things like managing spam and highlighting important messages, attachment management hasn’t changed much over the years.

MxHero has spent the past few years figuring out how to integrate email attachments with cloud services, founder and CEO Alex Panagides tells me. Mail2Cloud wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago, he says, due to the sorry state of cloud storage APIs. But now the industry has reached a point where companies like MxHero can actually implement cloud storage integration in new ways.

For the most part, Mail2Cloud seems to be an upgrade in almost every sense. Moving your attachments to the cloud means you won’t have to worry as much about reaching your inbox size limit, something that could be very useful for businesses that haven’t upgraded to online email solutions. It’s also useful if you need to exchange sensitive files — Box is HIPAA compliant, whereas many email systems aren’t.

The only thing you lose with Mail2Cloud is the ability to preview attachments directly within your email messages. But, as Panagides is quick to point out, the preview mechanisms on Box and Google Drive are far more powerful than most mail systems. Box, for example, can preview Adobe Illustrator files — good luck getting that on your email service.

One Mail2Cloud app can also archive all of your email messages, something that could be useful for the truly paranoid. And of course, once all of your mail is sitting on cloud storage, you can also share it with specific people.

Mail2Cloud can integrate with all email systems, and it’s also working on integration with Dropbox and Microsoft’s OneDrive. The main Mail2Cloud suite (which includes the Fusion, archiving, auditing, and tracking apps) costs $3 per user a month, while the mail importer feature is another $3 a month. The Retriever app, which can dive into your inbox and pull out all of your files and messages, costs $9 a month (or $29 a year).

In my testing on one of MxHero’s corporate Gmail accounts, I saw attachments that I sent and received immediately pop up in an associated Google Drive. Files are organized by conversation threads, so several attachments in a single email chain show up in a single folder. I didn’t have a chance to integrate Mail2Cloud with my personal inbox yet, but that’s something I’ll be testing out soon.

The big problem for MxHero is that many mail providers are already eyeing similar functionality. Google has slowly integrated the ability for you to send email attachments directly to your Google Drive (though that capability isn’t automatic yet), and Dropbox is definitely up to something now that it owns the Mailbox app. Panagides says his company differs by offering useful email management services for all mail providers.

San Francisco-based MxHero has raised around $1.5 million from White Star Capital, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Esther Dyson, and others.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/18/mxheros-useful-new-tool-lets-you-manage-email-attachments-on-box-google-drive/feed/01509471MxHero's useful new tool lets you manage email attachments on Box & Google DriveAWS Zocalo may signal the death of cloud storage as a markethttp://venturebeat.com/2014/07/10/aws-zocalo-may-signal-the-death-of-cloud-storage-as-a-market/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/10/aws-zocalo-may-signal-the-death-of-cloud-storage-as-a-market/#respondThu, 10 Jul 2014 22:45:52 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1505290GUEST: When Amazon enters any market, its objective is to drive down prices and drive out the competition. That’s what it’s trying to do with Zocalo, its new file-sharing and collaboration solution. Earlier today, the Seattle, Wash.-based tech giant announced Amazon Zocalo, a document storage and collaboration service for the enterprise. Zocalo enables users to store documents, sync them across […]
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GUEST:

When Amazon enters any market, its objective is to drive down prices and drive out the competition. That’s what it’s trying to do with Zocalo, its new file-sharing and collaboration solution.

Earlier today, the Seattle, Wash.-based tech giant announced Amazon Zocalo, a document storage and collaboration service for the enterprise. Zocalo enables users to store documents, sync them across devices, follow audit trails, and more. Folks can also offer coworkers feedback on content, affixing comments to specific areas of a shared PDF or webpage, for example. (You can find the full product details here.)

Amazon’s new service could majorly affect the cloud storage market, which is already on a path to commoditization. Here’s what Amazon’s introduction of Zocalo means for the cloud storage and collaboration industry.

Cloud storage as a market is going to zero

Amazon’s competitive advantage is its ability to offer storage and compute resources cheaper than other cloud vendors. It’s rivaled only by Google in this area. Amazon thrives on entering markets that have demonstrated demand and commoditizing them. Hosting was first, and storage is next.

New apps will subsume the value of cloud storage

As the willingness to pay for cloud storage evaporates, value will shift up the stack to new apps that solve functional challenges. Think of apps that offer content discovery across multiple storage repositories, content surfacing and policies based on metadata, content discovery and recommendations based on a user’s profile, anomaly detection around content usage, sharing, and permission settings. All the added value from legacy software will be moving to the cloud on top of the storage infrastructure.

Zocalo’s advanced commenting and editing features are perfect examples of vendors moving “up the stack.” Dropbox’s Carousel, which allows users to collaborate on Office documents, and Box’s advanced metadata are other examples of this trend.

Zocalo will put pressure on Box & Dropbox — but long-term, it poses the biggest threat to Google

Zocalo’s impact on competitors will vary by player and time horizon. In the short term, Zocalo’s clients will be existing AWS clients that have yet to adopt a file-sharing platform. Given Zocalo’s limited feature set, it is unlikely that Box customers will find Zocalo to be a realistic alternative today.

That said, Zocalo’s aggressive price points will put margin pressure on Box as it seeks to grow quickly and gain share.

Dropbox is in the same category. Though it would be unexpected to see a massive defection of existing Dropbox users to Zocalo, Dropbox’s price premium will not be sustainable as it seeks to maintain its growth. For mainstream adopters of cloud file-sharing solutions, price will become a much more important factor and Dropbox will have to adapt to market realities.

Long-term, Amazon has its sights set Google. Of all the players in the space, AWS is the only service with the resources to compete with Google on cloud compute and storage prices. Expect the competition to intensify and a wave of mergers and acquisitions as vendors seek to move up the value chain.

The real winners from these dynamics are chief information officers. With many viable alternative solutions and increasingly attractive economics, there has never been a better time to be a buyer of file-sharing and collaboration tools.

Alex Gorbansky is the CEO and founder of Docurated, a provider of sales and marketing productivity software to leading organizations like Weather Channel, DelMonte, Netflix, Havas, Digitas, and many others. Prior to Docurated, Alex co-founded Frontier Strategy Group, a leading emerging markets research and data business. Earlier in his career, Alex was a storage industry analyst at Taneja Group and held product management roles at EMC and Loudcloud. Follow Alex on Twitter @docurated.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/10/aws-zocalo-may-signal-the-death-of-cloud-storage-as-a-market/feed/01505290AWS Zocalo may signal the death of cloud storage as a marketEmail app Acompli now lets you attach files from Google Drive and Dropboxhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/07/09/email-app-acompli-now-lets-you-attach-files-from-google-drive-and-dropbox/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/09/email-app-acompli-now-lets-you-attach-files-from-google-drive-and-dropbox/#respondWed, 09 Jul 2014 13:00:45 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1504041In its quest to make you even more more productive, email app Acompli is adding some major new cloud storage integration. With the new Acompli update launching today, you can attach and search for files directly from your Google Drive or Dropbox accounts. Acompli (free for iPhone and Android) differs from other email apps by […]
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In its quest to make you even more more productive, email app Acompli is adding some major new cloud storage integration.

With the new Acompli update launching today, you can attach and search for files directly from your Google Drive or Dropbox accounts.

Acompli (free for iPhone and Android) differs from other email apps by giving you a quick way to access the files attached to your messages. After all, many of us end up using our email accounts as pseudo-cloud storage solutions. The new Dropbox and Google Drive integration only serves to strengthen that distinction.

The update also makes Acompli better suited for enterprise use, as it also connects with “Google Drive for Work” and “Dropbox for Business” accounts.

After testing out the new Acompli app briefly, I was surprised by how quickly I was able to dig up long-lost files from my Dropbox and Google Drive accounts. In some ways, Acompli’s search even seemed faster than the native search capabilities in those cloud storage apps.

I also noticed that I ended up missing the ability to quickly find files on cloud storage in other email apps. I suppose that makes sense — as we all spend more time on multiple devices, having a single file system in the cloud becomes more essential. The fact that I can’t easily attach a file from my Dropbox in Apple’s Mail client seems downright backwards today.

Data center storage giant EMC gets that more companies want to tap public clouds to store growing piles of data. So it’s been busy designing technology that can bring in revenue while also permitting cloud usage. Now EMC has acquired a startup that’s been working on that goal for years.

EMC announced that its bought TwinStrata in a statement today that spends much more space explaining the release of a new “enterprise data service platform” called VMAX³. TwinStrata’s technology will integrate with the new VMAX³ products by providing “embedded cloud access capabilities,” according to the statement.

TwinStrata created and sold a physical storage box for on-premises data centers called a CloudArray. Whatever data gets thrown onto gets copied or transported to a public cloud offsite. Supported clouds include Amazon Web Services, Google, Peer1, Rackspace, and SoftLayer. More clouds will become compatible with the technology in the future, EMC said.

Altogether, TwinStrata’s technology can help customers “move infrequently accessed data to the public cloud for lower [total cost of ownership],” EMC said today.

TwinStrata started in 2007 and was based in Natick, Mass. Investors include Avalon Ventures. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

TwinStrata’s technology has proven valuable to plenty of its customers, if you believe today’s letter from co-founder and chief executive Nicos Vekiarides.

“Since the initial development of CloudArray, the TwinStrata team has been committed to helping our customers maximize their resources by changing the economics, scale and agility of their storage environments,” he wrote. “Over the years, I’ve been honored to hear that for hundreds of organizations, our cloud-integrated storage approach has done just that.”

Now the technology lies in EMC’s possession. If things work out right, much more data could get thrown into public clouds now.

TwinStrata competitors like Nasuni could become targets of acquisitions as a result of today’s deal.

The company sells its technology directly to enterprises with existing cloud infrastructure, as well as to telecommunication providers, which resell CTERA’s tech to their own customers. CTERA has more than 21,000 business customers, according to the company.

Bessemer Venture Partners led CTERA’s $25 million round, which also included participation from existing investors Benchmark Capital, Cisco, and Venrock. With its new cash on-hand, the company’s current financing stands at $45 million.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Bessemer Venture Partners to our family of world-class investors and to usher in the platform era of enterprise cloud storage,” CTERA CEO Liran Eshel said in a statement.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/02/private-cloud-firm-ctera-bags-25m-to-wean-enterprises-off-dropbox-box/feed/01501037Private cloud firm CTERA bags $25M to wean enterprises off Dropbox & BoxSugarSync redesigns app & cuts price to compete with Dropbox, Google Drivehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/06/26/sugarsync-redesigns-app-cuts-price-to-compete-with-dropbox-google-drive/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/26/sugarsync-redesigns-app-cuts-price-to-compete-with-dropbox-google-drive/#respondThu, 26 Jun 2014 14:49:35 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1498009SugarSync just gave its desktop app a facelift, promising the same treatment for its iOS and Android apps shortly. The cloud storage startup today revealed its redesigned desktop app, an upcoming mobile redesign, and a (limited time) price cut for new users. These announcements may help the startup compete more effectively with its better-known rivals, including Dropbox, Google Drive, […]
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SugarSync just gave its desktop app a facelift, promising the same treatment for its iOS and Android apps shortly.

The cloud storage startup today revealed its redesigned desktop app, an upcoming mobile redesign, and a (limited time) price cut for new users. These announcements may help the startup compete more effectively with its better-known rivals, including Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive).

SugarSync has been a quieter success than those services, racking up millions of users without daily mentions in the tech press. It’s benefitted hugely from partnerships with device makers like Samsung, Lenovo, and Fujitsu, which have preloaded SugarSync software onto some of their devices. The company declined to disclose precise customer figures to VentureBeat.

The new app is out today for English speakers, and the company plans to roll it out in Spanish, French, and Japanese within the next 60 days. SugarSync promises an app redesign for iOS and then Android shortly thereafter.

The service has a great reputation among its customer base, though it’s pricier than many of its competitors. 100 GB of storage on SugarSync usually costs individuals $100 per year, though SugarSync has temporarily slashed its prices by 75% for new users. That brings a year with 100 GB of storage to $25, which makes the service substantially cheaper than Dropbox’s Pro tier.

SugarSync enables individuals and small businesses to manage and backup files across multiple platforms, including PCs, Macs, and iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices. Founded in 2008, the San Mateo, Calif.-based company has raised more than $60 million in funding from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, ORIX Venture Finance, and Sigma Partners. Mike Grossman, a former Intuit vice president, is the company’s chief executive.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/26/sugarsync-redesigns-app-cuts-price-to-compete-with-dropbox-google-drive/feed/01498009SugarSync redesigns app & cuts price to compete with Dropbox, Google DriveThis 'invisible security layer' for your Dropbox files now lets you email attachments without fusshttp://venturebeat.com/2014/06/25/this-invisible-security-layer-for-your-dropbox-files-now-lets-you-email-attachments-without-fuss/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/25/this-invisible-security-layer-for-your-dropbox-files-now-lets-you-email-attachments-without-fuss/#respondWed, 25 Jun 2014 15:00:46 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1497084Email attachments: Normally pretty low on people’s list of favorite things in the world. But what’s even worse is having to download apps and software just to open an email attachment. Cloud-storage compliance layer Sookasa is now making it easy to open those extra-secure attachments by taking away the need to download or set up anything. […]
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Email attachments: Normally pretty low on people’s list of favorite things in the world. But what’s even worse is having to download apps and software just to open an email attachment.

Cloud-storage compliance layer Sookasa is now making it easy to open those extra-secure attachments by taking away the need to download or set up anything. As of today, you can email a link to a Sookasa-secured file to a recipient who can immediately download it simply by clicking on the link. The file remains under Sookasa’s HIPPA-compliance layer the entire time until its downloaded onto the recipient’s device.

Sookasa is a compliance layer for cloud storage (only Dropbox so far) that provides additional security to cloud-stored files for regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, and education. It takes the form of a special folder within the Dropbox account where files are stored for additional security.

Moreover, to make sure that the file goes to the intended recipient, clicking on the link in the original email triggers a second email in which the recipient can find the link to the download, a sort of “two-step authentication.”

“Our goal is really to allow employees in areas where information is really sensitive… to use their favorite tools, and we won’t bother them too much with security,” Sookasa cofounder and chief executive Asaf Cidon told VentureBeat in an interview.

Senders can also set up the parameters of the download link, such as making it expire after it’s been downloaded or if it hasn’t been downloaded after a certain amount of time, and so on. The company sees it as giving the sender additional control over the sensitive files once they’ve been sent.

“The main thing we’re trying to prevent in this scenario is accidental mistakes,” said Cidon.

When I first heard about this new capability, I immediately thought of the sharing permissions of Google Drive, options such as sharing with “specific people,” “people with the link,” “anyone at your organization,” and so on. Here, we also have cloud-based file storage and sharing, in-browser viewing, and customizable permissions.

However, Google Drive is not HIPPA compliant, and that’s the differentiator Sookasa is selling. Of course, not everyone wants or needs HIPPA compliance, and not everyone uses Dropbox for file storage and sharing; but for those who do, this should be a welcome capability.

The company has already been testing this with a few customers, including SonoCiné and Atman Insurance Services.

Sookasa was founded in 2011 and is based in San Mateo, Calif. The company raised $5 million in April from Accel Partners, First Round Capital, SV Angel, and others, bringing its total funding to $1.6 million.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/25/this-invisible-security-layer-for-your-dropbox-files-now-lets-you-email-attachments-without-fuss/feed/01497084This 'invisible security layer' for your Dropbox files now lets you email attachments without fussMatching Google, Microsoft ups OneDrive free storage to 15GBhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/06/23/matching-google-microsoft-ups-onedrive-free-storage-to-15gb/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/23/matching-google-microsoft-ups-onedrive-free-storage-to-15gb/#respondMon, 23 Jun 2014 16:56:55 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1495918Things are getting cloudier at Microsoft. Office 365 or OneDrive users are about to see their cloud storage lockers get bigger. Microsoft says it will now give OneDrive users 15GB of free cloud storage, up from the previous 7GB allotment. This bring’s Microsoft’s OneDrive offering into parity with that of its biggest rival, Google Drive, which also […]
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Things are getting cloudier at Microsoft. Office 365 or OneDrive users are about to see their cloud storage lockers get bigger.

Microsoft says it will now give OneDrive users 15GB of free cloud storage, up from the previous 7GB allotment.

This bring’s Microsoft’s OneDrive offering into parity with that of its biggest rival, Google Drive, which also offers 15GB free storage.

Both the OneDrive and the Google Drive offerings are the largest available, beating out free storage given away by players like Apple’s iCloud and Dropbox.

Microsoft says that within the next month, Office 365 users will get 1TB of free space, up from 20GB.

This will give Office 365 consumer users every bit as much space as Office 365 business users.

Also, Microsoft lowered the price of its monthly storage plans to $1.99 per 100GB from $7.49 (also matching Google Drive), and to $3.99 for 200GB from $11.49. It has eliminated the 50GB plan altogether.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/23/matching-google-microsoft-ups-onedrive-free-storage-to-15gb/feed/01495918Matching Google, Microsoft ups OneDrive free storage to 15GBBox could raise another $100M before its IPOhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/06/20/box-could-raise-another-100m-before-its-ipo/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/20/box-could-raise-another-100m-before-its-ipo/#respondFri, 20 Jun 2014 21:30:10 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1495423Enterprise-focused cloud file-sharing company Box has been on a difficult road to an IPO, and it might be raising some extra money before it actually goes public. Box is in talks with private-equity firm TPG to raise a new round of funding, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The round could total $100 […]
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Enterprise-focused cloud file-sharing company Box has been on a difficult road to an IPO, and it might be raising some extra money before it actually goes public.

Box is in talks with private-equity firm TPG to raise a new round of funding, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The round could total $100 million or more, according to Re/code.

Box filed to go public three months ago, but it has delayed its plans. In late April, the company had second thoughts and decided to push it back to June.

This new round of funding is likely aimed at deferring the IPO date even further, as Box goes through money quite quickly. According to its S-1 filing, it had a net loss of $168 million from the fiscal year that ended on Jan. 31.

“Our plan continues to be to go public when it makes the most sense for Box and the market. As always, investing in our customers, technology, and future growth remains our top priority,” a Box spokesperson told VentureBeat when reached for comment.

During its last funding round in November, Box raised $100 million at a $2 billion valuation.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/20/box-could-raise-another-100m-before-its-ipo/feed/01495423Box could raise another $100M before its IPOJoliCloud merges all your online storage — up to 44 free gigabytes' worthhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/06/17/jolicloud-merges-all-your-online-storage-up-to-44-free-gigabytes-worth/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/17/jolicloud-merges-all-your-online-storage-up-to-44-free-gigabytes-worth/#respondTue, 17 Jun 2014 16:00:15 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1493019JoliCloud Drive lets people consolidate their various cloud storage services and work with them from a single dashboard.
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Starting today, the company will be offering a new product, Drive, which lets people consolidate their various cloud storage services and work with them from a single dashboard.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you could combine the 15GB of free data on Google Drive, the 2GB of free data on Dropbox, and 10GB of free data on Box for a single virtual drive with 27GB, JoliCloud’s Drive is the answer. In fact, you can assemble up to 44GB of free storage across various services with JoliCloud, accessing all of them through a single interface.

JoliCloud Drive doesn’t make the underlying services completely transparent. It still segments your storage according to service, presenting each one as a different item in a left-hand pane — sort of like different drives in the OS X Finder or in the Windows Explorer. But you will be able to move files from one service to another just by dragging and dropping within JoliCloud Drive.

Drive also provides a consistent interface for viewing and editing images, playing music files, or watching videos — regardless of which platform the files are stored on. You just double-click and the file opens. If it’s on Google Drive, it will open within Google Drive for editing.

JoliCloud Drive also provides an Evernote connection, so you can drop files or images into Evernote notebooks. It connects with Flickr for image storage. Somewhat strangely, it even includes an RSS reader from Feedly, so you can catch up on your news.

Drive will be free. A Pro version will let you connect multiple accounts from the same service (your personal and work accounts on Google, for instance). In the future, the Pro version will also add support for a search tool that works across storage services, as well as a cross-service file type filter (so you can view all your music files, or all your photos).

A file system for ChromeBooks

Krim is eyeing one rapidly-growing market segment in particular: ChromeBook users. ChromeBooks took off in 2013, accounting for 21 percent of business notebook purchases by the end of the year. ChromeBooks, while they are cheap, light, and occasionally very well designed, lack one major feature: storage. Everything you want to save, with a ChromeBook, must be saved in the cloud somewhere.

In a conversation with Krim last week in Paris, Krim described JoliCloud as an “alternative interface for ChromeBooks.”

“We’re going to take over that platform and make it cool again and make it open again,” Krim said.

“Don’t get me wrong — I love Google. But why should it be a Google-only world?”

Naturally, Google would like you to save your stuff on its own servers, locking you into the Google world and giving it that much more ability to target its advertisements at you. Meanwhile, Apple views things the same way: Buy an iPad or a MacBook, and Apple will steer you towards iCloud storage and Apple’s cloud services.

Krim sees a future where people’s cloud services aren’t so tied to the devices they purchase. JoliCloud Drive is an attempt to break that technology stack apart a little bit, letting you choose whatever device you want independent of the cloud services you’re using. As long as you have a web interface, you can access JoliCloud Drive and have access to the files you’ve stored on any service.

Well, almost any: JoliCloud’s Drive doesn’t yet support Apple’s iCloud, due to complexities with the Apple API. Krim said they’re working on it.

A dangerous place?

And that brings me to JoliCloud’s biggest weakness. Ultimately, its success will depend on the cooperation of Google and Apple. If they decide they don’t like JoliCloud’s aggregation of their storage services, it’s easy enough for them to block JoliCloud, either overtly (via policies) or covertly (by subtly changing their APIs to keep JoliCloud’s services from working).

For his part, Krim is used to being shadowed by Google. JoliCloud’s previous product, JoliOS, is a web-based desktop with apps you can install for various functions.

Sound familiar? Yep, that’s basically the same thing as Google’s ChromeOS, which runs on ChromeBooks. Krim says that Google employees have acknowledged to him that ChromeOS took a lot of inspiration from JoliOS, which has been in development since 2008. (ChromeOS didn’t get started until 2009.)

Krim says that 5 million people have downloaded JoliOS to date, and 1.5 million have registered. But with the ascendance of ChromeBooks, there’s less and less need for JoliOS. That’s why the company is shifting from providing a cloud desktop to providing a cloud storage. JoliCloud announced on May 12 that it would be discontinuing JoliOS.

JoliCloud is based in Paris. Its backers include Atomico Ventures (Skype founder Niklas Zennström’s VC firm) and Mangrove Capital Partners. It has raised $4.2 million to date.

Krim’s previous company was NetVibes, an early RSS reader that used widgets to provide its customers with a customizable dashboard — much like iGoogle would do later. Krim founded NetVibes in 2005 but left in 2008.

“NetVibes was about giving people focus in a world of craziness. JoliCloud is about giving people choice in a world with two competing platforms,” Krim said.

Choice is good. Now JoliCloud just has to avoid being made obsolete — or being crushed — by the giants it is trying to disrupt.

Correction 6/17: Krim left NetVibes in 2008, not in 2007 as we previously reported.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/17/jolicloud-merges-all-your-online-storage-up-to-44-free-gigabytes-worth/feed/01493019JoliCloud merges all your online storage — up to 44 free gigabytes' worthCozyCloud raises $1.1M to help you build your own personal cloud serverhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/06/17/cozycloud-raises-1-1m-to-help-you-build-your-own-personal-cloud-server/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/17/cozycloud-raises-1-1m-to-help-you-build-your-own-personal-cloud-server/#respondTue, 17 Jun 2014 10:00:47 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1492948CozyCloud, a Paris-based startup building an open-source platform for personal cloud storage, raised $1.1 million (800,000 euros) earlier this month. “We are building an open platform that allows people to have their web apps and their personal data on hardware they control,” said CozyCloud co-founder Frank Rousseau. In short, CozyCloud lets you set up a […]
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CozyCloud, a Paris-based startup building an open-source platform for personal cloud storage, raised $1.1 million (800,000 euros) earlier this month.

“We are building an open platform that allows people to have their web apps and their personal data on hardware they control,” said CozyCloud co-founder Frank Rousseau.

In short, CozyCloud lets you set up a server (based on Android) that provides contacts, calendar, file storage, and email — all under your own control. It supports synchronization with mobile devices and laptops.

All of the apps share the same file store.

“Because all apps can share [the data], they can interact together,” Rousseau said. “For instance, we built a quantified self application that provides visualization of data stored by other apps.”

Other companies have attempted to build a “personal cloud,” responding to concerns about privacy and security with the big public cloud providers. Few have achieved much success. For example, Tonido and BitTorrent Sync offer purely private file storage and media access, Lima aims to do the same thing with a plug-in file storage gadget, while Pogoplug has achieved some success selling small file-storage devices that plug into your home network and can be accessed remotely. More comparable to CozyCloud is ArkOS, a 23-year-old coder’s attempt to give the middle finger to Google with a full-featured suite of cloud apps, all running on a Linux box.

However, none of these projects yet have anywhere near the reach of mainstream cloud services like Google Apps and Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box. Like them, CozyCloud will face challenges in making its tech as easy to use and as convenient as popular cloud services.

CozyCloud says that Orange, La Poste, Alcatel-Lucent, and Mozilla are all evaluating its technology.

The investors are French VC fund Innovacom and Seed4Soft, a French angel group. CozyCom has seven employees and was founded in 2012.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/17/cozycloud-raises-1-1m-to-help-you-build-your-own-personal-cloud-server/feed/01492948CozyCloud raises $1.1M to help you build your own personal cloud serverBox acquires Streem so you don't have to keep filling your local disk with 'cloud-based' fileshttp://venturebeat.com/2014/06/16/box-acquires-streem-so-you-dont-have-to-keep-filling-your-local-disk-with-cloud-based-files/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/16/box-acquires-streem-so-you-dont-have-to-keep-filling-your-local-disk-with-cloud-based-files/#respondMon, 16 Jun 2014 18:57:37 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1492703Not to be outdone by competitor Dropbox, file-storage company Box just acquired a Y Combinator startup of its own: Streem. In short, Streem offers unlimited cloud-based storage that “never runs out.” Through StreemFS, its own filesystem, people can access their files and view them without needing to download copies and keep them on their devices, […]
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Not to be outdone by competitor Dropbox, file-storage company Box just acquired a Y Combinator startup of its own: Streem.

In short, Streem offers unlimited cloud-based storage that “never runs out.” Through StreemFS, its own filesystem, people can access their files and view them without needing to download copies and keep them on their devices, often a problem when trying to use cloud-storage as an extension of local storage.

Streem’s team and technology will become part of Box’s products, according to Streem’s announcement on its website.

Streem’s key technology also includes and on-the-fly video transcorder that enables instant streaming of videos regardless of their original format. It even adjust the streaming format and quality based on the available internet speed, and dynamically fluctuates it as it goes.

Additionally, its streaming and buffering algorithms mean enable cloud-stored files to open as fast as files stored locally. This is particularly useful for video storage and streaming, which usually means lag and delays.

While Streem’s technology will offer Box the ability to eliminate local storage of file copies, which competing services such as Dropbox and Google Drive still require, Streem is not the only company with this kind of technology. Bitcasa, which raised $11 million last November from Horizons Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, Samsung Ventures America, Andreesen Horowitz, and First Round Capital.

This is nonetheless terrific news for Streem’s investors, including Grooveshark co-founder Andres Barreto and Ironfire Capital.

Streem was founded in 2013 by Ritik Malhotra and Tanooj Luthra, and was part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2012 class.

We’ve reached out to the company and will update with more information.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/16/box-acquires-streem-so-you-dont-have-to-keep-filling-your-local-disk-with-cloud-based-files/feed/01492703Box acquires Streem so you don't have to keep filling your local disk with 'cloud-based' filesBox courts nonprofit customers with Box.org initiativehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/05/28/box-courts-nonprofit-customers-with-box-org-initiative/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/28/box-courts-nonprofit-customers-with-box-org-initiative/#respondWed, 28 May 2014 13:00:39 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1481290Box is diving into the world of philanthropy — though it’s far from a selfless initiative. The cloud storage company today announced Box.org, which will provide free or discounted Box licenses to registered nonprofits. The company will donate 10 “starter” licenses to nonprofit organizations, while larger nonprofits can slash the default pricing for Box services in half. In other words, this […]
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Box is diving into the world of philanthropy — though it’s far from a selfless initiative.

The cloud storage company today announced Box.org, which will provide free or discounted Box licenses to registered nonprofits. The company will donate 10 “starter” licenses to nonprofit organizations, while larger nonprofits can slash the default pricing for Box services in half.

In other words, this is a promotion dressed up as a philanthropic venture. Box will still pull in substantial revenues from nonprofits like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which has around 2,000 employees using the service, according to Box.

And Box sure needs that money.

The company filed for an IPO in March, bringing its dire financial situation into the public spotlight. Box’s revenues have swelled in recent years, but so have its losses: It earned $124.2 million in revenue for the financial year ending Jan. 31, 2014, though its net loss totaled $168.6 million. That stands in contrast to $58.8 million in revenue and a $112.6 million net loss the year prior.

It’s worth noting that with its software-as-a-service model, Box has to pay for infrastructure and employee costs upfront while revenue from its deals takes a year or two to materialize. It just signed a massive deal with General Electric for 300,000 licenses, for example, but it’s not getting all that cash upfront. Nevertheless, it burns through cash fast.

There are more than 1,000 nonprofits using Box today, according to Bouck, including the World Bank Group and the International Rescue Committee.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/28/box-courts-nonprofit-customers-with-box-org-initiative/feed/01481290Box courts nonprofit customers with Box.org initiativeSpringCM: With this $18M, we ‘want to be in every fight’ with Dropbox & Boxhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/04/17/springcm-with-this-18m-we-want-to-be-in-every-fight-with-dropbox-box/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/17/springcm-with-this-18m-we-want-to-be-in-every-fight-with-dropbox-box/#respondThu, 17 Apr 2014 14:35:45 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1450007SpringCM CEO Greg Buchholz really, really wants you to know his company’s name. The “content cloud services” company based in Chicago today announced $18 million in new financing that it will use primary to rev up its sales and marketing engine. “Rightly or wrongly, one of the reasons we are not well known is we were not targeting […]
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The “content cloud services” company based in Chicago today announced $18 million in new financing that it will use primary to rev up its sales and marketing engine.

“Rightly or wrongly, one of the reasons we are not well known is we were not targeting the hundreds of millions of free users, which is where Dropbox has succeeded,” SpringCM‘s Buchholz told VentureBeat Wednesday afternoon.

While pulling in users with a free offering is a great way to build brand awareness, it’s a very expensive proposition — one SpringCM had no desire to emulate.

“I think all three of us are targeting a different part of the content world,” Buchholz said. “I still think of Dropbox as more of a consumer company.”

The SpringCM service is about much more than sync and storage, said Buchholz, who left the venture capital world to found the company in 2005. From day one, it’s catered to enterprise customers, with a focus on security and document management features. SpringCM has a document workflow “engine,” version control tools, document check-in, and so on. It also offers the ability to populate metadata around any piece of content, which can help people throughout an enterprise find content through search.

Folks using SpringCM can track every piece of action and activity around a piece of content, chief marketing officer Ben Kiker told VentureBeat. That’s essential for SpringCM’s government and health care customers, such as the U.S. Department of Energy and Athena Health. SpringCM also has some tech companies using its service, including Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook.

SpringCM competes with cloud collaboration companies like Huddle as well as more traditional cloud storage companies.

About half of SpringCM’s 400 enterprise customers are also Salesforce customers, said Buchholz. Most commonly, these shared customers want to manage documents and forms in a more efficient fashion for sales and marketing teams using Salesforce.

Salesforce “is not a terrific place for standardizing information on how you’re going to store and manage information around those opportunities or accounts,” said Buchholz, noting that SpringCM can push those materials into the Salesforce system at the appropriate juncture.

Buchholz declined to disclose company-wide revenue, but said that multiple customers pay SpringCM north of $500,000 a year. Additionally, the firm “consistently” has a greater than 90 percent renewal rate, and last quarter it was 95 percent, he said.

This new $18 million financing featured investments from Goff Capital and Square 1 Financial in addition to participation from existing investors. SpringCM’s total funding now stands at $61 million.

Today, the company has roughly 100 full-time employees. By the end of the year, it’s looking to hire another 50 or so. Around 15 will join the firm’s Silicon Valley office, where marketing chief Ben Kiker resides.

Buchholz anticipates a 100 percent growth rate year-over-year. To accomplish that, he’s focusing heavily on sales and marketing for the first time in the company’s nine-year history.

“I want to be in every fight. I want to be in every game. I want to win every deal — and it’s just difficult,” he said.

“It’s difficult from a market awareness standpoint to get everyone to take a look at us. But that’s what I want the most: to have a fighting chance in every deal that’s out there.”

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/17/springcm-with-this-18m-we-want-to-be-in-every-fight-with-dropbox-box/feed/01450007SpringCM: With this $18M, we ‘want to be in every fight’ with Dropbox & BoxBox beats Dropbox to IPO filinghttp://venturebeat.com/2014/03/24/box-beats-dropbox-to-ipo-filing/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/24/box-beats-dropbox-to-ipo-filing/#respondMon, 24 Mar 2014 21:20:42 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1214669Box has decided to go public ahead of key competitor Dropbox. The cloud storage company filed its S-1 documentation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today, revealing a host of operating information that it withheld in the past. Box’s revenues have swelled in recent years, but so have its losses: It earned $124.2 million in revenue […]
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Box has decided to go public ahead of key competitor Dropbox.

The cloud storage company filed its S-1 documentation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today, revealing a host of operating information that it withheld in the past.

Box’s revenues have swelled in recent years, but so have its losses: It earned $124.2 million in revenue for the financial year ending Jan. 31, 2014, though its net loss totaled $168.6 million. That stands in contrast to $58.8 million in revenue and a $112.6 million net loss the year prior. (Find more detail in the sidebar.)

Box’s finances

Revenues
2011: $21.08 million
2012: Not reported
2013: $58.78 million
2014: $124.19 million

A large portion of that money has gone toward research and development. In the year that ended on Jan. 31, Box spent $46 million on R&D. It had 972 employees as of Jan. 31.

Box ended this financial year with $109 million in cash on the balance sheet. The company is looking to raise $250 million in its IPO. Analysts have pegged Box’s valuation as high as $3 billion following its $100 million funding round late last year.

Box calls out many of its competitors by name in the filing. When it comes to collaboration, other players include EMC, IBM, and Microsoft’s Office365 and SharePoint. On the file-sync-and-share front, Google Drive, Microsoft’s Skydrive Pro, and Citrix ShareFile are there, along with — you guessed it — Dropbox.

Box has over 34,000 paying organizations and over 25 million total users, according to the filing. In contrast, Dropbox has 4 million businesses (not all of which are paying customers) and over 200 million users, according to Dropbox figures from late last year. Dropbox, which is also expected to go public soon, declined to comment on the Box IPO.

Box has a clear strategy for growth: courting industries (often with stringent regulatory requirements). The company announced in interviews with VentureBeat that it is selling its cloud storage to specific industries, including health care, financial services, and education. The company recently made some hires with domain expertise, such as former Google Health employee and investor Missy Krasner, who now leads Box’s health care strategy. Its enterprise general manager, Whitney Bouck, is the chief architect behind the scenes for this industry push.

While Box talks a big game about being enterprise-ready, the company notes in its S-1 filing that it promises 99.9 percent uptime in its service-level agreement, not 99.999 percent — known as five-nines — which is more of a standard among enterprise-grade infrastructure.

But Box claims faster upload speeds than some competitors. “Neustar, a neutral third-party, has validated that Box’s average upload speeds across locations are 2.7 times faster on average than the closest competitor,” the filing states.

Box also claims to be data-driven when it comes to customer support. “Within the customer success organization, we have a team dedicated to customer retention that monitors our customer usage data to identify opportunities for enhancing our customer’s engagement with our product,” the S-1 filing states.

“This is great news as it’s a real validation of the market that we’re playing in — the future of enterprise software has well and truly arrived and companies are no longer afraid to try new, innovative cloud technologies,” said Alastair Mitchell, the CEO of cloud collaboration company Huddle.

Box competitor Egnyte is a bit less bullish on the company’s IPO, however.

“While news of Box’s official filing for IPO brings a lot of excitement to our market, the public release of their financials raises a lot of concern,” Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain told VentureBeat. “It is public knowledge now that Box has claimed over $360 million in deficits to date, with no solid roadmap to profitability. This seems to have become a trend lately where companies are being rewarded with huge valuations for simply having a large customer list.

“This has created a major disconnect from the traditionally successful business model which used to be based on creating profitability and sustainability. This new evolution of the business model, with 7-figure funding rounds and 10-figure valuations being the norm, has taken pressure off of companies to be successful in the present but placed a heavy burden on them for the future. It is my hope that Box can become profitable and succeed in their IPO, strengthening the faith in our space.”

Box is headed to the New York Stock Exchange under the unsurprising ticker symbol “BOX.”

Jordan Novet and Christina Farr contributed to this report.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/24/box-beats-dropbox-to-ipo-filing/feed/01214669Box beats Dropbox to IPO filingGoogle slashes Google Drive storage prices to take on Box & Dropboxhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/03/13/google-slashes-google-drive-prices-for-100gb-1tb-plans-now-1-99-9-99-respectively/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/13/google-slashes-google-drive-prices-for-100gb-1tb-plans-now-1-99-9-99-respectively/#respondThu, 13 Mar 2014 17:17:15 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1117748Its 100GB plan, previously at $4.99 per month, is now $1.99. There's also a massive price cut for its 1 terabyte plan. Originally at $49.99, 1TB of storage now costs $9.99 per month.
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As if the online storage war wasn’t heated enough.

In a snub to competing services such as Dropbox and Box, Google announced that it is significantly lowering its prices today. Its 100GB plan, previously at $4.99 per month, is now $1.99. Most interesting, however, is the massive price cut Google made for its 1 terabyte plan. Originally at $49.99, 1TB of storage now costs $9.99 per month.

With this change, Google clarifies that its 15GB plan remains free. This plan, rolled out nearly a year ago, unifies storage across Gmail, Drive, and Google+ Photos.

Quite a few competitors have stepped up to do battle with Dropbox since the service’s unsettling outage earlier this year.

For example, one Pro user said at that time, “We’re using Dropbox for Teams (a lot of money), and after this incident, I would be much less resistant to any requests to research alternative solutions (and there seems to be a plenty of them). “

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/13/google-slashes-google-drive-prices-for-100gb-1tb-plans-now-1-99-9-99-respectively/feed/01117748Google slashes Google Drive storage prices to take on Box & DropboxDropbox service returns to China after a nearly four-year hiatushttp://venturebeat.com/2014/02/17/dropbox-service-returns-to-china-after-four-year-hiatus/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/17/dropbox-service-returns-to-china-after-four-year-hiatus/#respondMon, 17 Feb 2014 17:45:33 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=919014China has apparently changed its stance on Dropbox. The country blocked the U.S.-based cloud storage service in 2010, less than two years after its initial release. But Dropbox is now accessible in China, reports Tech in Asia. The tech news site first noticed the service was available in China late last week, and it has […]
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China has apparently changed its stance on Dropbox.

The country blocked the U.S.-based cloud storage service in 2010, less than two years after its initial release. But Dropbox is now accessible in China, reports Tech in Asia.

The tech news site first noticed the service was available in China late last week, and it has since verified its uninterrupted availability throughout the country. Both personal cloud-syncing and public file-sharing features are reportedly functional.

Despite its newfound availability, Dropbox isn’t likely to accumulate a large following in China: The country’s connection speeds to overseas servers are extremely sluggish, which make foreign web services a pain to use. Plus, Dropbox faces more attractive local competitors like Tencent, which offers a mammoth 10 TB of free storage — that’s 5,120 times more space than Dropbox’s free 2 GB.

It’s not entirely clear why China originally blocked Dropbox — and even less clear why it’s now available — though some speculate that Chinese authorities didn’t want its citizens to access or share politically sensitive information through the service. The block could have also been intended to head off a competitive foreign service. The Chinese government has invested hundreds of millions of yuan on public cloud-computing infrastructure in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuxi, and Hangzhou.

With more than 40 million private businesses, China could be a valuable new market for the growing cloud storage company, which is expected to IPO this year. If it intends to chase the Chinese market, though, it’d not only have to invest heavily in new data centers, but also cooperate with the Chinese government. It wouldn’t be an unprecedented move for an American tech company, but it seems less likely for a still-private startup with other growth avenues.

Dropbox competitor Google Drive remains inaccessible in China, but Box has some customers in the country. It’s not a large segment of Box’s business — it doesn’t have an office or sales presence in China — so the company doesn’t provide specific numbers, according to a Box spokesperson.

We’ve reached out to Dropbox for more information on its availability in China.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/17/dropbox-service-returns-to-china-after-four-year-hiatus/feed/0919014Dropbox service returns to China after a nearly four-year hiatus